Heraclea

Leonard Nimoy - The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins

During a Manticore run this afternoon, a teammate said "I have every kind of -ologist on me but the proctologist." I replied, "That would be a nasty debuff." Your mission, if you choose to accept it: Design the power picks you would give to the new minion, Crey Proctologist.

When Willpower was introduced it was the only tanker primary that had endurance relief built in. Other sets had relatively slow clicks that gave endurance if they hit surrounding mobs, but nothing like Quick Recovery. So I made many Willpower tankers back then and learned to be semi-effective on them. Back then, while I never really agreed with it, I could sort of see the point: being the only endurance friendly set required a more active playstyle. Now there are many more armor sets like Bio, Radiation, and Electric that offer significant relief from the endurance mechanic. As such, I used to be bullish on the set but soured on it towards the end: its one advantage was no longer unique. And none of these sets have an aggro aura penalty. So there wasn't much point any more to giving WP a weak aura. WP is now a slightly weaker version of Invulnerability that adds extra recovery but isn't quite as tough out of the box and lacks a self-heal, even a slow one like Invulnerability's. WP's other advantage is that it gives you a bit of immunity to seldom encountered but annoying forced AFKs like Terrorized and Confused. It is a very concept friendly set that doesn't add funks or glows to your character if you don't want them. None of this stuff justifies giving the set an aggro disadvantage. I now do have a level 50 WP/mace tanker on TB and will probably create more next time I get an itch to make a fresh one. Oddly, I also made an experimental Staff character: a regen brute built to see whether, and at what cost, I could make a regen brute that could tank for a team.

David Byrne - Good and Evil

My kinetic/rad scrapper is my healer. Has the badges to prove it. 😉

On Victory I had a spines/WP scrapper who was quite an effective tank. When I remade the concept on TB I made a tanker. On TB I also have an electric/electric blaster who applies one specific debuff consistently, making that character part defender. So's the water/WP sentinel. I have a tanker with Quicksand and Salt Crystals that can be used to good effect. I often play my tankers as melee controllers or anti-controllers, since rather than rooting mobs in place they try to gather them into gloms for the convenience of AoE attackers.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Curse of Millhaven The Curse of Millhaven was the name of the first character I made in the CoV beta.

My characters fly or jump. Air Superiority remains very handy, especially on a melee attack set with very little control like Fire. With jumping it's a tossup between the yellow jump pool for Combat Jumping, or the olive jump pool for the single target -def and -res debuff. I forget the official names for all of these.

IME the chief issue with psi is not so much the damage - there are always ways to work around incoming damage - as it is the various nasties that are attached to it, like -recharge and constant mez. Resistance to psi damage will not help you there.

When I do play redside I find myself often having to mess with the gamma so I can see where I am going.

Alex Harvey - Snake Bite

The one game that claimed more of my life than City of Heroes is Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures. This was a game editor that allowed you to create games in the old SSI 'Gold Box' style of Dungeons and Dragons games. Eventually the game was hacked to allow you to import new music, walls, sprites, and the like. I created at least ten full length adventures for this game. There was an active community of players that's slowly dwindled but is still around.

Messengers from or avatars of various deities. Mythological creatures and descendents of heroes. Historical figures. Alchemy. Raised by wild animals. Amazon training and discipline. Just another soldier who learned the ways of a weapon.

I tend to have a fair number of basic and useful crafted IOs like the Panacea, Numina, Miracle procs lying around on base. I get them by crafting the random yellow recipes that drop, converting those enhancements into rares, and then gambling with them until they land on something useful. Problem is that they are in ample supply in level 50 versions, but they're wanted at level 7. I catalyze an existing high level character's set IO, unslot that, and replace it with one that character can slot but the lowbie can't. This way the lowbie gets an attuned version that can be slotted at 7, 17, or 27 and so forth. My other chief use for catalysts, apart from ATOs and the like, is when you get a recipe for a set with good bonuses, but it's a set that drops from 25 to 50 and you got one on the low end of the scale. Craft it and spend a catalyst. For a melee I like to have as many Kinetic Combats as they can support as early as possible. Some I buy through AH bids; that can take a while for them to fill, though. I also buy four of the Accuracy/Damage recipes with at 20 merits apiece. I then use 'odd' numbers of merits to buy converters which I use to convert three of the Accuracy/Damages into something else in the set. That way those enhancements cost one or two rather than fifty merits.

Synlakross - Bleeding Kansas

My unfavorites are: * Admiral Sutter TF - Unhelpful maps (where do I go next? What am I supposed to do when I find it?) and presence of overused IDF mobs at low levels. Duray is perhaps tied with Nosferatu as being the game's most annoyingly overpowered AV. (At least the game gives you tools to handle Reichsman.) * Apex TF - Again, unhelpful maps. Extremely annoying generic MMO crap in the Battle Maiden fight. Tin Mage also has useless maps, but the combats are a bit more fun. The Shadow Shard TFs are run so seldom, usually only when they are up as a weekly, and people know what they are getting into and prepare themselves with team teleport and flight powers; I don't mind them all that much. Then again Admiral Sutter does not seem to be a favorite either. Not much more rewarding than Penny Yin, longer, harder, and more confusing.

More specifically: it is quite possible to play hero content while ignoring some of the storylines involving the death of Statesman, the destruction of Galaxy City, and so forth. The storylines I like best are New Dark Astoria for high level soloing, and some of the ones that involve Circle of Thorns, the Warriors, the Freakshow, and for lower level content, the Skulls. You can't do anything as a villain without getting drawn into Arachnos and its office politics. And the payoff of the endgame there is that some day in the future you will defeat Lord Recluse and replace him. Then you get kicked back into the present and back to the same old grind. The patron arcs are especially frustrating; you are called onto the carpet at some stage in each and told that it is forbidden for you to upset the status quo. Of course nothing really changes blueside either, except maybe in those Atlas Park arcs where you root Arachnos out of the warehouse district. But in a superhero world this is a bit less jarring.

After eight months I finally have a level 50 villain. But she's only a rogue, so she can also access blueside TFs and such. Otherwise progress would be too slow. The character I decided to get serious with badges with is a vigilante. One problem not really mentioned in the poll is that every other mission seems to have you fighting Arachnos or Longbow. There are parts of the shared or blueside content that have similar issues: IDF, Warworks, and Neuron Clockwork are just as boring in some hero content. The devs who made those enemies must have been very proud of them, they used them so often, But blueside you know where that is and can do something else.

Black Sabbath - Behind the Wall of Sleep

The Pipkins - Gimme Dat Thing

Kinetic Melee has consistant damage debuffs for the mobs. It also adds energy damage to the smashing. As such it works well with primarily resistance based armors. I have a kinetic/rad armor scrapper that I built as a speedster concept. For AoE it relies mostly on Burst, a Foot Stomp style power with reasonable recharge. Repulsive Torrent is skippable. You will either love or hate the revving sounds it makes. Street Justice has a little bit of -def, a little bit of -res, Apart from that it's all smashing damage. Probably best suited to a tanker or brute that gets its toughness from its own armor and doesn't need synergy with an attack set. Your most significant AoE attack is a 'finisher', which means you may have to wait to use it to best effect. I have a StJ/Willpower brute that works fairly well; this was my first level 50 brute in fact.

The Isley Brothers - It's Your Thing

Sisters of Mercy - Vision Thing

Mot seems like a wallflower, but once you get a couple of drinks into him he's a real party animal.

My electric/electric is a blapper. That combo almost has to be. Your sustain power is a PBAoE that also stuns enemies. Many other bread and butter powers are also PBAoE. And it's easy to drain mobs completely of endurance. I think of the character more of a blaster/defender or blaster/controller spamming a specific debuff. The player version of a Sapper. When I want a pure DPS character I turn to an archery/devkes blaster. This one is for team utility.